Dark secret, 2016

DARK SECRET, a public art intervention, addresses the deep silence that exists in our society with regards to sexual violence.   Statistics of sexual assault and rape from around the world are alarming and only a fraction of these acts of violence are reported to the police. Victims and survivors offer different reasons for their reluctance to approach an authority to report this most personal of crimes – fear, mistrust, shame, guilt, pain. All over the world, these invasive assaults take place without outcry, hidden under the weight of hundreds of years of patriarchy.

DARK SECRET brings to the streets this secret kept in our societies, the secret of a terrible violence against women through the act of the rape and assault.

 The first public presentation of this piece was performed in Spain and denounced the 1289 reported rapes that take place in the country every year. Men and women went into the streets and silently held together 1289 pieces of underwear. 

In October 2016, DARK SECRET will travel to Toronto, Canada.  The silence will be broken, a quiet stoic rebellion that invites the public, allowing them to look and to deal with this old and terrible form of violence.

Through this hanging action we appreciate that the statistics often does not show the reality of the number. In this opportunity, we will hang 1890 underwear, the number of sexual assaults reported annually. 

rosa mesa  was born in Canary Islands and moved to Toronto in 1996 where she studied at the OCAD graduating in 2002. Her work has been exhibited in Spain, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Cuba, Canada, Brasil, Serbia, Germany, France  and Switzerland.

Considered a multidisciplinary artist, her works move between installations,  performance and public interventions. Her pieces are a response to her surroundings that become dissected and reconstructed in a new narrative that exposes whatever that triggers her in amusement or disgust. She has an interest in drawing as a medium of communication that is less charge than painting and her practice is often based in an observant and humoristic approach. She explores areas of semiotics and the art practice, identity, nomadism, migration,  feminism and the hybrid and changing state of contemporary culture. Starting from the point of considering the increasing aesthetization of life, where the object is send toward consumerism, the actions become a way to rebel against the absolute domination of economical value. Meaning, significance and other type of values are in jeopardy. She can be consider a socially engaged artist. She is a member of daily services and art platform based in Berlin. Since 2004 rosa works between Spain, Canada, Germany and Switzerland where she  has been doing several art residencies. Today she lives in Las Palmas, Spain.

https://www.facebook.com/rosa.mesa.315

Actividad incluida en el programa de la Bienal Miradas de Mujeres 2016 organizada por MAV